Tuesday February 9, 1999
Briese Household- Kitchen
Indianapolis, Indiana
3:11 PM Local Time
Augustus Briese groaned in misery as he opened his eyes, feeling the agony as seemingly every single nerve ending in his body cried out for mercy from whatever torment he was feeling. He tried to stretch, and scratch an itch on his side, but found he couldn’t- his arms had been bound behind him.
What the hell?
Slowly, it began to come back to Gus. The two men in his backyard. Him running upstairs to get his gun. A familiar voice calling to him, and something smashing into his head. He must have fallen at least partly down the stairs after that… it’d explain why more than his just his head was hurting.
“Ugh,” Gus groaned, trying in vain to move anything. To his relief, he found that only his hands were bound. His legs were free, although he didn’t feel strong enough to stand on them. In fact, the only thing he felt strong enough to do was curl up into a ball and go back to sleep…
“Well, look who’s awake.”
That familiar, accented voice echoed around the kitchen, and Gus rolled towards it, hissing at the pain all the while. Sure enough, near the sink, a pair of boots sat on the floor, connected to legs. Gus followed the legs up to the torso, then the chest, then the neck, and finally the head and face of the man who stood there. A gasp of surprise came out of him, and he closed his eyes, trying to shake his head, sure he was hallucinating.
Vassily Ganiyeva stood in front of him, helping himself to Gus’ stash of Glenfidditch.
“Hello, Mr. Briese. Remember me?” The Ukranian revolutionary slowly walked towards him until he was standing over him. “Belfast, nineteen seventy-nine?”
“Vassily,” Gus panted. The man had aged well over the past twenty years, although he seemed even more scarred and weathered than he had been when Gus had seen him last. “You’re dead…”
“No, I was never dead.” Vassily said calmly, quietly. “Just mostly dead. Waiting to be dead. Sometimes even wishing I was dead. But never all the way dead, Mr. Briese. I don’t die. Not when there’s work to be done.”
The voice was calm, sure, but there was definitely an ominous quality about the way Vassily was addressing him. It was almost mocking in its serenity, but Gus knew for certain that Vassily was not here as an old friend wanting to catch up on old times.
Still, he tried to talk. He wasn’t eager to find out what this man was going to do when he ran out of things to say. “So… you must be happy that Ukraine’s finally been liberated from the Soviet…”
A humorless chuckle cut him off. “In name only. Those bastards at the Kremlin still control the country. Don’t ever think otherwise, Mr. Briese. I’m not here about that though.” He knelt down, forcibly turning Gus’ head so he was looking right into Vassily’s piercing blue eyes. “Where’s my sister, Mr. Briese?”
Gus’ blood ran cold, his breath becoming heavy and labored. “I don’t know. I heard she went back to the Ukraine, but…”
The backhand came with more force than Gus could have imagined, and he soon could taste blood on his lip. He sputtered, trying to spit the blood off, but Vassily was turning his head back to him. “One more time, Mr. Briese. Where. Is. My. Sister?”
“I told you, I don’t know…”
Vassily nodded, and stood back up, walking away, slowly. He got maybe three paces, then wheeled aroud, throwing his glass of Glen as hard as he could. Gus yelped as the vessel smashed into his skull, hissing even more as the alcohol seeped into his wounds. It felt like his scalp was on fire.
“You don’t know,” Vassily said calmly. “Well I do. I’ve talked to my sister, and she’s told me everything. How you’ve used her. Betrayed her. Exiled her to hell itself, and wouldn’t even blink when your own child was on the verge of death. I feel I owe you a debt of gratitude, Mr. Briese, for ‘taking care’ of her while I’ve been away. It was fortunate I got this job. It gives me a chance to pay you back personally.”
Job? Gus wondered for but a second, before the vision of the two men digging up the far corner of his backyard jarred his memory. He should have known that Vassily was here with the thieves. At least today would hold one advantage… it’d be tough for Delaney to kill him for this if he was already dead.
“How… how did you know about that?”
Vassily shrugged. “Someone’s been following you for a long time, Mr. Briese. Not me… you’d have been in a puddle of blood back in New York if it had been me. It’s fortunate though. This way is going to be a lot more fun. I might even have some ‘fun’ with your wife and daughter once they get home.”
“Vassily, please…” Gus began to whine. The thought of being tortured to death didn’t appeal to him.
But Vassily was no longer paying attention. He was looking at the back deck. The two other men had come up, holding a dirt-covered briefcase Gus knew all to well. It was the briefcase he had placed the manila envelope containing Project Wildeshaw. Vassily began to confer with the two men in Russian, none of the men paying much attention to the Irishman tied up on the floor. Gritting his teeth, Gus rolled onto his back. With what little mobility he had in his hands and arms, he felt around for a piece of the broken glass. He had seen this work in movies before. Maybe.. just maybe.
Vassily and the two men were now arguing. Gus couldn’t exactly tell, but if he could guess, the two men were trying to get Vassily to go with them, but Vassily was insisting he stay behind. Every now and then, one or another would shoot him a look, and Gus would force himself to hold still, then go back to trying to use a piece of the broken class to cut his bonds. He winced as the shard sliced open his finger… he had to hurry… time was short.
Finally, it appeared that Vassily had convinced the men to go on without him, and the three exchanged handclasps, before the two men turned and left. Vassily watched them go, and then turned back to Gus, pulling a knife from his pocket as he did. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Briese. But business before pleasure…”
He knelt down next to Gus, pulling his head up by Gus’ shock of red hair. Slowly, he began to bring the knife towards Gus’ face, Gus whimpering all the while. “Vassily, please… please…”
Vassily, of course, ignored him. The knife was less than an inch away… he had to act…
Gus thrust his head forward, barking in pain as the crown smashed into Vassily’s face. Vassily fell back, stunned, holding his nose, where blood was spurting from it. Gus tried to move his hands, was relieved to find out that he had managed to loosen his bonds enough with the glass. Turning on his heels, he bolted for the door. He didn’t know what else to do but run from the vengeful man that was bleeding on the kitchen floor.
Gus burst out of the back door, onto the deck. He ran for the stairs that would take him down to hopeful freedom, but before he could reach them, he felt Vassily running behind him, tackling around the legs, sending him to the deck. Vassily rained punch after punch down on Gus’ body, Gus doing everything he could do defend himself, but the angry Ukranian was too strong. Gus eyes teared up as several shots landed home in his breadbasket, making him want nothing more to curl up into a ball. But that would mean certain death he knew. Instead, he flailed, swinging back at Vassily, but couldn’t manage anything better than a glancing blow… until a kick struck home right in Vassily’s groin.
The Ukrainian rolled off, bellowing as instinct forced him to attend to his crushed manhood. Gus quickly rolled to his feet, and lashed out a kick at Vassily’s temple, causing him to flop onto the deck. Gus looked around quickly, spotting an extention cord that the lawn workers must have left from the last time they were here. He grabbed the cord, and wrapped it around his opponents neck, pulling back with all his might, trying to strangle his attacker.
Vassily gurgled, and clutched at his throat, kicking wildly as the pressure around his neck tightened, cutting off his air supply. Gus grimaced as he continued to pull back. But he gasped as Vassily, showing a strength he hadn’t counted on, somehow managed to start rising, despite Gus’ best attempts to strangle him. Vassily, showing rage for the first time Gus had ever seen, swung mightily, catching Gus in the temple, and the Irishman crumbled. Vasilly then threw Gus into the railing of the deck, Gus gasping as the wood cracked behind him, not yet giving way.
Not even bothering to remove the cord around his neck, Vassily approached Gus, throwing blow after blow into Gus’ weakened body. He then pinned Gus against the deck’s railing with his forearm, trying to strangle him. Gus tried to pry his hands off, but it was no use. He was too tired, and his vision was already starting to blur, and even dim. Gus squeezed his eyes shut, tears leaking out. With his flailing arms, he grabbed the extention cord still around the Ukranian’s neck, but then his strength gave out, and he fell over to the side.
There was a rewarding thunk, and suddenly, Gus found he could breathe again. He looked up, and saw Vassily clutching his face, having just been driven into the deck’s railing. Gus climbed to his feet as Vassily recovered, turning back to regard him. Gus couldn’t think of anything else to do but shove his assailant as hard as he possibly could.
It was enough.
Vassily fell into the deck’s railing, and overbalanced, pinwheeling his arms in a vain attempt to avoid going over, his face suddenly wide with shock. Gus watched in open mouthed fascination as he went over the side of the deck, the extention cord going with him. Gus watched, wide eyed, as a knot in the cord became embedded in a fissure, the line suddenly going taut with a loud “CRACK!” that echoed across the secluded backyard.
Panting, Gus staggered to the edge of the deck, and gagged at the sight. Vassily was dangling, his feet maybe eighteen inches off the ground. His head was hanging obscenely to the side, and his face had gone purple. He continued to sway and twitch in his death throes. Gus turned away, limping back towards the house.
Once inside, he bent over the sink, vomiting into it, as the waning adrenaline forced his stomach to empty its contents. For several seconds, he stood leaning against the sink, panting and wincing, but thankful that he somehow was alive.
The phone rang. Gus groaned, looking over at the cordless set sitting at the edge of the counter. It rang again, but by the fourth ring, Gus had the phone in his hands, turning it on. “Hel… hello?”
“Gus? Its Gayle!” the voice of his wife sounded like sweet music into his ears.
“Ivana,” Gus tried to force himself to sound normal, like he hadn’t just killed a man he thought had died twenty years ago anyways. “What’s going on?”
“I just wanted you to know Gus… we had a flat tire on our way to Castleton. They’re changing it now, but it’s probably going to hold us up an hour or so. We should be home by seven or eight, okay?’
“Yeah… that’s fine.” Gus replied. “You two… have fun.”
“Alright.” There was a pause. “Is everything okay, Gus?”
“Yeah. I’m fine,” Gus replied, wincing as his side began to throb. “You two have fun, okay?”
“Alright. I better get back. The man changing our tire seems a bit sketchy, and I left Wendy with him. I’ll talk to you later, Gus.”
“Talk to you later, Gayle.” Gus replied, hanging up.
He looked up at the clock. He didn’t want Gayle knowing about this... it would get her asking too many questions. As sore as he was, he had to clean up, and fast. He looked around the room. The shotgun he had gone up to retrieve lay on the table, almost forgotten in the chaos. There was blood and liquor and glass all over the kitchen floor. Something broken upstairs. And a hole in his backyard.
Oh, and a dead body hanging from an extention cord off his deck.
Gus looked outside, and saw the hole. It wasn’t big enough… yet. But it shouldn’t take too much to remedy that… at least enough for tonight. He’d have to get a bag, and bury it deeper later. But time was short.
He walked outside, and pulled the knot in the cord out of the crack in the deck, hearing the soft thud as Vassily’s body droppd the rest of the way. He climbed down the stairs, and looked at Vassily’s crumpled form, taking a deep breath, steadying himself as he walked towards the hole, picking up a shovel one of the other thieves had left there. He groaned, as he began digging. Menial labor was normally beneath him, but he wasn’t about to bring in anyone else on what happened today.
“The things I do to protect this family.” Gus muttered as he continued to dig.
==============================
Tuesday February 9, 1999
Briese Household- Master Bath
Indianapolis, Indiana
7:51 PM Local Time
Gus had just stepped out of the shower when he heard the front door open and close, his wife calling up the stairs to announce that she was home. Throwing on fresh clothes (and wincing from the pain that still was wracking every part of his body), Gus quickly descended the stairs, walking into the kitchen, where Gayle and Wendy were setting their haul from Castleton on the table. “How was the mall?”
“It was nice,” Gayle remarked, patting one of the boxes. “I bought a dress for our dinner Sunday night.”
“Oh, yeah,” Gus recalled. “We’re going out for Valentine’s day this year.” He winced again at another pang in his side- something that was not unnoticed by Gayle.
“Are you okay, Gus?”
“I’m fine. I slipped while coming down the stairs and banged myself up a bit.” Gus lied, although he wondered if there wasn’t something serious, given how many times Vassily had hit him. Still, he had prepared a series of fibs, just in case anything stood out as suspicious to either Gayle or Wendy. Given it was dark outside, he didn’t anticipate the question of the state of the backyard coming up tonight, but when it did, it would be attributed to a busted sewer line that had been fixed.
“You look sore. Maybe you should see a doctor,” Wendy remarked, sorting through her own purchases, which were notably of less quantity than Gayle’s.
“No. Seriously, I’m fine,” Gus replied, trying to give a tone that left no room for argument. He glanced at Wendy. “So, how was school today?”
“Oh, good.” Wendy replied, smiling. “I got an A on my precalc test.”
“Right,” Gus replied, with the same aura of indifference Gayle had shown several hours prior. “Did your mom show you that announcement for The Doll House?”
Wendy nodded. “I can’t, Daddy. I already promised that I would do Guys and Dolls at the school.”
Gus scowled at his daughter’s refusal, but Gayle spoke before he could. “I told you that he wouldn’t be happy about that, Wendy,” the Briese family matron said. She looked over at Gus, giving him a placating smile. “Let’s not argue about this now. Wendy and I haven’t had dinner yet, and we’re absolutely starving. Have you eaten?”
Gus shook his head. “No.” Of course he hadn’t eaten. He’d just spent the better part of four hours trying to cover up a murder. But one that, for the time being, at least looked like it would be covered. “We could go out. Catalonatto’s shouldn’t have much of a wait, if everyone feels like Italian.”
Both Gayle and Wendy seemed to be up for it. “We should probably change into something more respectable” the matriarch pointed out. “Wendy, can you be ready in fifteen minutes?”
“I can be ready in five,” Wendy said quietly as Gayle and Gus left the room, Gayle still fussing over Gus’ injuries. She sighed. So, her parents were going out for Valentine’s day, and leaving her by herself. She glanced at the phone, thinking for several seconds, before finally reaching into her purse, and pulling out a card. She stared at it for several seconds, then looked at the phone again.
If her parents weren’t going out themselves, she’d never even consider it. Heck, she couldn’t believe she was doing this even then. She’d never done anything like this before. Heck, she’d never even had a boyfriend before. And she was going to call someone who her parents wouldn’t approve of in a million years? Swallowing hard, she picked it up and dialed, looking around nervously as if expecting her parents to come down the stairs and catch her in the act. She took a deep breath as the dial tone turned to a small ringing sound.
“Hello… is Terrence there?” Wendy asked, “Um… yes. This is Wendy… we met at the car shop today? Yeah. I know, you remember. Um… I was thinking and…” She took a deep breath.
“Sunday sounds wonderful. Yeah. Pick me up at six? Okay, great, I’ll see you then.”
================================
Saturday March 31, 2012
Lakefront Brewery- Fermentation Room
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
12:14 PM Local Time
WAIT! STOP! Do NOT adjust your television sets! Wendy Briese, who’d idea of ‘heavy drinking’ is a second sip of communion wine, is REALLY standing in a brewery! Maybe she has gone completely and utterly insane in the wake of the attack on her manager, although there might be a more reasonable explanation for this. We’ll see. Wendy doesn’t even look that nervous to be in a room where the devil’s juice is made, standing between two rows of fermenting tanks, smiling at the camera as usual. She’s wearing a simple pale green blouse, with a black pair of pants, listing slightly under the weight of the titanium belt slung over her shoulder.
“You know, it’s sad. Ever since Milwaukee was announced as the site for Chaos Theory, I have heard so many wrestlers and fans scratching their heads and going “where?”. As if all Milwaukee has to offer is an arena large enough to hold a wrestling show, and a few hotels that we can stay in long enough to wrestle our match, and get the hell out of dodge. It’s kind of a shame, really, because Milwaukee really and truly is a wonderful city, located right on the shores of Lake Michigan. Although it certainly could do with the nicer weather…”
Wendy grimaces, and shrugs. The denizens might not like her saying that, but considering it’s forty degrees and cloudy outside, not much room to argue.
“That’s one of the hardest, and yet most enjoyable things about being a wrestler for a global promotion like FFW. On one hand, you have to leave your home behind, and often your family, and fly hundreds of miles away, all for a sporting competition that generally barely lasts fifteen minutes. But on the other hand, you get to see so much of America, and soon, once our European tour starts, the world. And I know a city like Milwaukee isn’t a quote-unquote ‘Marquee City’, like Los Angeles, New York, or even Las Vegas. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth coming to. Every city of this size has something special about it, something that gives its own unique identity.”
“It might not be as prevalent anymore, but for years Milwaukee has been known as a city of breweries, dating back to its early days in the 1850s when it was being built as a port here on Lake Michigan. A high German immigrant population settled here, and, well, I hate to sound like I’m stereotyping here, but… well, yeah.”
Wendy flashes an apologetic grin.
“Anyways, Terrence and I got a chance to tour one of the breweries today. And I know, I’m fairly well known for not being much of a drinker… I’m not exactly fond of the taste, and I certainly don’t care for what happens when individuals imbibe too much. But that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the process, and the amount of effort that’s required to practice a craft such as this. It’s a pretty complicated process, one that I won’t even attempt to explain. But what strikes me is this- each batch can take MONTHS to create, and brewers spend years… or even decades perfecting their recipes.”
“It’s really not all that different from wrestling, if you think about it. We wrestlers spend years honing and fine-tuning our own recipes for success, the skillsets we need to succeed in that wrestling ring. And the products of our labors, well, sometimes they are months in the making. I mean, look at Kaitlynn and Jenny… they’ve been on the verge of killing each other for the better part of six months now. Look at Scarlett, who’s been wanting to win that FFW Championship for the past eight months, ever since she lost it to Kaitlynn Stryfe in the Elimination Chamber. And I guess, you can look my title belt here as well. True, I’ve only had it a couple of months, and I’m still the newest champion out of all the current champions, but it was over four months from the announcement of the No Surrender championship til it’s first coronation. And believe me, for those of us in that match, every single day in that four months made us want that belt more and more.”
“And in reality, this deal with Starla has been going on just as long. Ever since that day when she and Isabella first faced, and I ran down to stop Starla and Jo from ending Isabella’s career. And then of course, there was their second meeting, where all hell broke loose, and I ended up punching Starla in her puffy little chipmunk face. So yeah, I guess you can say something like this has been… ahem… brewing for quite some time.”
She grins at her awful joke.
“Everyone knows what’ll be going on in just a few short hours over at the Bradley Center, and on millions of televisions around the world on Pay-Per-View. The stipulations of this match have been in place for two months now. Me against Starla. My belt on the line. And Starla’s husband is the guest referee. A helpless situation, especially since Starla gave me a bitter taste of what this was going to be like back in the first week of February, when she guest refereed that match between me and Moxie. She made it clear what my outlook was: I can’t win. I have no chance of winning, at least when it comes to her.”
“But it goes deeper than that, and it goes deeper than the boss who so readily threw me under the bus before I had even held the title for an hour, and made this match possible. I don’t think Starla and I would need that much incentive to go at it against each other. The only thing similar about us is our hair color, and that her surname also indicates some sort of Celtic ancestry. Other than that, it’s night and day between the two of us.”
Wendy shifts the belt upon her shoulder, and walks a couple paces towards the camera.
“A couple of weeks ago, Lumina Ferrari faced Starla, and I have to say, she stole my thunder with her words right before that match. She said what I, and I think a lot of the locker room was feeling. That Starla was an idiot. That she foolishly put her own grand design to humiliate me in front of our company’s reputation. That had I, a WOMAN, beaten that chauvinistic pig Johnny Moxie, the SVW Champion, right there in the middle of the ring, fair and square, it would have made our all-woman’s company look that much better. She sold us… ALL of us out, just to upset me.”
Wendy chuckles.
“Well, thank God for Nikkii Spainhower. At least she managed to do what Starla prevented me from doing.”
“I don’t want to think of Starla as an idiot. She SHOULDN’T be an idiot. It would be a disservice to the American education system for her to be an idiot. This is someone who got her DOCTORATE at the age of SEVENTEEN. That’s not a moron… that’s a PRODIGY. Considering how hard I had to work just to get an Associate’s Degree from IUPUI, I find it remarkable that she managed to do that, at so young an age. So why is it for all of Starla’s education, for all of her BRAINS, she just doesn’t seem to get it?”
“I guess you can’t teach common sense, and you certainly can’t teach patience. Starla’s not big on either, it seems. When you achieve the highest level of educational accomplishment before most kids even get out of high school, I guess you don’t need it. What’s the point of hard work, when everything is supposed to come easy to you? What’s the point of patience, when you blew through twenty-five years of education in half the time? I can almost see the process that got Starla to this point. You become a wrestler, for whatever reason, and find that it’s more difficult than you had anticipated. So you take a shortcut. Then you take another one, and then another one, until these shortcuts become a second nature to you, and you don’t know another way. Rinse, wash, repeat, until it gets to the point that your husband is officiating your title matches.”
Wendy shakes her head, scoffing in irritation, as she takes another few steps closer to the camera.
“And that’s why I can’t let Starla win tonight, and take this belt. Because it flies in the face of everything that the No Surrender Championship is supposed to be about. I’ve said before that this is the ultimate risk/reward scenario. You’re risking your pride and reputation, knowing full well that you can suffer a defeat in the most humbling way possible, simply for a chance at glory and a shiny title belt. To win this belt, I had to do just that to Lumina Ferrari, to twist and stretch her in the middle of that ring, until she had no choice but to swallow her pride, decide to fight another day, and beg me to stop hurting her.”
“So why should it be any different for the good doctor? But Starla’s not willing to take that risk, especially now that she knows that there’s someone else in the division who can match her, if not beat her, in submissions. Instead, she needs the odds padded in her favor, happily done by our owner, who like I said the other day, only picks the FINEST of the FFW talent pool to throw her weight behind. Starla doesn’t care about the challenge this belt is supposed to bring, or the honor that should be behind a submission only competition. She doesn’t care about the satisfaction that can only be felt by cleanly defeating your opponent in the middle of the ring. She simply wants her shiny little belt, and she wants it NOW.”
Wendy scoffs in disdain, and shakes her head, looking directly into the camera.
“Starla, you think you can get this belt off of me easily. You think this is just going to be the Johnny Moxie match all over again, where you can frustrate me time and time again, until I grow tired, and make a mistake, and you can take advantage. This isn’t a match, this is a coronation, and by the end of the night, the belt that you were so UNFAIRLY gipped out of at Cold Blooded will be yours. And Wendy Briese, the plucky little goody-goody, will be so far in over her head, there’s not a damn thing she can do about it, right?”
“What you fail to understand, Starla, is that EVERYTHING has a price, especially in this business. Titles are bought, not with gold, or jewels, or the friendship of our boss, but with hard work, sweat, dedication, blood, heart. Everything that makes a champion a champion. So here’s my question to you, Starla. How high a price are you willing to pay?”
“Because there will be blood, Starla. And there will be sweat. And once that match starts, you better be dedicated to finishing it Starla, because I’m going to do everything I can to drive up that price. Until it becomes so steep, that you have absolutely no choice but to abandon your quest, and tap that mat, with the knowledge that not even your husband standing feet away in a striped shirt can save you. You were in the Banshee once, Starla. How did it feel? That wasn’t even the hold at it’s maximum efficiency. I can make it worse. I can make it so joints pop out, and muscles tear, and nerves scream in agony, until you literally, honest to God feel you’re going to snap in half. And when that happens, when you are at your absolute breaking point, pounding that mat, wanting it all to stop, do you really want Alex to just stand there, refusing to ring the bell and give me the victory?”
Wendy glares into the camera, her emerald eyes once again, burning with that fire and determination.
“But I can guarantee you one thing, Starla. If you do win this match, by hook or by crook, it will be a Phyrric Victory. You’ll stumble to the back, this heavy strap weighing down your shoulders, and you will be thinking ‘One more win like this over Wendy, and I’m done for.’ And then you’ll realize that I’ll still have my rematch clause, and you’ll have to do this all over again. And I doubt the odds will be as stacked in your favor.”
“So go on, Starla. Reuse Jo McFarlane’s cue cards, and call me a phony. Convince yourself that I think this is some kind of fairy tale, where the good guys always win. Use every strand of ambiguity and inconclusiveness you can find to convince yourself that the cold hard evidence doesn’t matter. Blame Lumina all you want, I won this belt while you lay lying outside the ring. It won't matter. Because for the first time in your life, you’re going to discover there’s something that doesn’t come easy for you.”
“For the first time in your life, you’re going to fail your test.”
Wendy spins on her heel, and walks out of the brewery, the scene fading to black behind her.
=====================
Saturday March 31, 2012
Grant Park Condominiums- Unit 311
Chicago, Illinois
5:33 PM Local Time
“We have just received word of an update on the story stemming from a decomposed body found in an Indianapolis backyard on Wednesday night…”
Augustus Briese nearly choked on his Glenfidditch as his head snapped around towards the television, where a cable news program was playing, the female anchor continuing to intone her story for the world to hear.
“Police have been trying to determine the identity of the man buried in the yard of the former residence of former Broadway actor Augustus Briese, who was convicted of killing his wife back in 2003, only to escape just a couple months ago. Police have managed to use INTERPOL dental records to confirm that the man was Vassily Ganiyeva, a Ukranian rebel who was last known to be in Belfast in 1979…”
Gus turned at the sharp intake of breath, and looked at Ivana, who was covering her mouth at the name of her brother. Gus gulped, and glanced at his son, who was also staring at the television in disbelief.
“Police have dated time of death to sometime just over a decade ago, and are unsure of why a man who was thought to be killed in Northern Ireland has turned up in an Indianapolis backyard. We’ll keep you updated as more details emerge, although Police have asked us to remind everyone that Augustus Briese is still considered a dangerous fugitive, and authorities should be called immediately if…
The rest of the words of the anchor were cut off as Ivana shut the television off, then turned an accusing glare upon Gus, her son doing likewise. Gus looked from the small female Ukranian to the massive male one, swallowing hard, and wondering how on Earth he had come to possess the shittiest luck on the planet.
“Look… I can… explain…”
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